Mark Shields: Cruz's political obit is premature amid anti-D.C. fever

Mark Shields

In D.C., yesterday's instant analysis too often becomes today's conventional wisdom. That appears to be the case in the emerging press-political consensus that freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas - by gratuitously alienating GOP congressional colleagues while leading a doomed crusade to defund Obamacare - wrote his national political obituary.

It is true that Cruz's interpersonal skills are, to put it mildly, undeveloped. At the confirmation hearings of Chuck Hagel, a former GOP senator and decorated Vietnam combat veteran, to be defense secretary, Cruz, conceding he had "no evidence," smeared Hagel by wondering whether checks "deposited in (Hagel's) bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia (or) came directly from North Korea."

Why were so few of his GOP colleagues on Capitol Hill willing to follow his lead in closing the U.S. government to defund Obamacare? "What I can tell you," Cruz has said, "is there are a lot of Republicans in Washington who are scared."

But the 2016 GOP presidential nomination will be decided not by Republicans in Congress, but by engaged and energized Republicans who go to caucuses and vote in primaries. And among the most energized Republicans, Cruz is championing their cause.

The most engaged Republicans and GOP-leaning voters are the 4 in 10 party members who agree with the Tea Party. Pew Research Center says 92 percent of Tea Party Republicans "prefer a smaller government with fewer services," yet just 2 in 3 non-Tea Party Republicans favor such a government. On energy, non-Tea Party Republicans favor developing "alternative sources" by a 73-16 percent landslide margin. Tea Party Republicans instead say "expanding production of traditional sources" should get priority.

No potential 2016 candidate more embodies the Tea Party's priorities and passions than Cruz, who this month won three times as many votes as any other Republican in a straw poll of 2,000 conservative activists and faith leaders at the Values Voter Summit.

Given public contempt for political Washington, it's likely the 2016 campaign will be a lot like that of 1976, when voters - disgusted by the criminality that led to the resignations of Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon, as well as with Vietnam - chose the anti-D.C., anti-business-as-usual candidate, Jimmy Carter. Many think the 2016 nominee will be a governor or other non-Washington figure. Will anyone be more disliked by the D.C. establishment or more believably anti-Washington than Cruz?

Recall that in the year leading up to the 2012 GOP nomination, front-runners were Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, businessman Herman Cain and Donald Trump. Cruz may self-destruct before the Iowa caucuses. But his unpopularity with his party chiefs and colleagues could be his strength.